1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image display device, an image display method and a storage medium storing an image display program, and more particularly relates to an image display device that displays photographic images which have been photographed by a photography device such as a digital camera or the like.
2. Description of the Related Art
Often in photography with a photography device such as a digital camera or the like, a person who is a subject can be photographed many times. Then, at a time of replaying, in order to see an enlarged view of the face of the person who was the subject in photographic images obtained by photography with the photography device, it is necessary to perform complex controls, displaying a whole image and zooming in on a face position before viewing. When a number of images are being browsed, it is necessary to carry out this complex control repeatedly.
Accordingly, adjusting photographic images for display has been considered. As technologies relating to detecting faces of people appearing in photographic images when the images are to be adjusted and suchlike, technologies have been proposed in, for example, the descriptions of Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open (JP-A) Nos. 8-138024, 2000-292852 and 2006-293782.
With the technology described in JP-A No. 8-138024, it has been proposed to determine the orientation of an image on the basis of positional relationships of structural components of the human body. It has further been proposed to determine the orientation of an image from the positional relationship of a pair of eyes, which is a positional relationship of structural components of the body.
With the technology described in JP-A No. 2000-292852, for a face image photography device which photographs face images of subject persons, it has been proposed to measure a lateral width of a face in an inputted face image, and find a ratio of the measured face lateral width measurement value to a target face lateral width value, which is a suitable lateral width of a face. This ratio is specified as a zoom ratio, and face images of consistent sizes are obtained by performing zooming processing on inputted face images in accordance with the specified zoom ratios.
With the technology described in JP-A No. 2006-293782, it has been proposed to perform detection of a position of a face region or pair of eyes or the like of a person appearing in such an image, by face recognition technology, and also to calculate an inclination angle of the face region. A partial region of the image, such as the detected face region or the like, is cropped, and the partial region of the image is magnified/reduced and outputted. It is also proposed to perform rotation processing of the face image in accordance with the inclination angle of the face region.
However, with the technologies described in JP-A Nos. 8-138024 and 2000-292852 and the like, keeping positions of faces displayed in images constant is not given serious consideration, so the line of sight of a user browsing through images will move for each image, and there is room for improvement.
Furthermore, with the technology described in JP-A No. 2006-293782, because the region of a whole face is displayed enlarged at the center of an image, the line of sight of a user will be kept relatively constant in comparison with the technologies described in JP-A Nos. 8-138024 and 2000-292852. However, because positions of the eyes of subjects, which are what many users would be looking at, are not given serious consideration, there is a problem in that the line of sight of a user cannot be tightly concentrated on one point.